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Wayne discusses the two opposite poles of editing: attention to minutiae and attention to overall structure.

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Wayne discusses reviews of fiction in the broad sense, focusing on things that reviewers ask that are irrelevant—and suggesting things they could ask about that would be more revelatory about the author and their book.

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Wayne discusses the importance of a type of spareness in writing fiction, and cites a short story by Raymond Carver, novels by Vladimir Nabokov, a song by Leonard Cohen, and two movies (Unforgiveable and Glengarry Glen Ross)—to illustrate his points.

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Wayne discusses some changes that have happened in traditional publishing in the last decade or more, and speculates on how these changes may expand and other changes may come.

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Wayne chooses examples from four works to illustrate good and bad writing: What Strange Paradise, the Giller Prize–winning novel by Omar El Akkad, published in 2021 ◘ Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer, the multi–award winning Canadian science fiction writer, published in 2003 ◘ A Tale of a Tub, a satire and parody in prose by Jonathan Swift, the 18th-century English writer, published in 1704 ◘ “Why Omicron Is Counterintuitive,” with science writer Carl Zimmer in an interview on the New York Times podcast The Daily, their first podcast of 2022.

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Wayne discusses the four types of editing and the "deliverables" that an editor owes to their client.